this book is about california, sacred and profane buildings, shamans, pranksters, psychedelic visionaries, the prayer wheel in berkeley, the chapel of the chimes in oakland, and the alan watts library in druid heights, something i first learned about in arthur magazine.

3. mary appelhof's worms eat my garbage: how to set up and maintain a worm composting system (kalamazoo, michigan: flower press, 1982)

i want to be able to gather our food wastes, walk them outside, and feed them to worms. in return, i want and expect, with time, rich compost for our garden. this book will help.

4. karl linn's building commons and community (oakland, california: new village press, 2007) - published under creative commons

i'm tired of reading books about building community online. i want to read a book about building community offline - with help from community gardens, public exhibits, and neighborhood commons.

5 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Professor,

Thank you so much for posting this. I especially liked the selection on community spaces. My father is in real estate and works very hard to integrate community spaces into his projects -- a moving theater and restaurant complex with a covered courtyard in the middle, condos situated around a common yard. Now he's looking towards residential projects all built around a garden. I plan on purchasing that book for him for father's day.

Simone de Beauvoir's "The Mandarins" (1956), as prep for my Camus seminar this Fall, but really assigning it was just a way to get myself to read it. I finished last week; it was fabulous!

David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" (1996). I started this a decade ago, but got distracted after 250 or so pages. I've felt disturbed for months now that our generation's pre-eminent novelist has died so young and in pain, and I want to give respect where due.

Roberto Bolano's "2066" (2004, trans. in 2008)) is on my list, as is Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" (2008), but I'm hoping to get discounted copies of both first, since last I looked they're still in top-dollar cloth.

i am an associate professor of environmental studies and urban ag at the university of san francisco. i live in oakland with sarah and our daughter siena. contact me via the email address listed on this page.